This is a light, simple and summery vegan lemon verbena cake. It’s made with aromatic lemon verbena leaves as well as fresh lemon zest and juice for a mild but distinctive flavour.
That said, if you can’t get hold of lemon verbena you could always just add a bit more lemon zest for a perfectly good lemon cake.
There’s a long list of health benefits attributed to lemon verbena when taken medicinally, including reducing inflammation and aiding digestion and heartburn. I’m not sure how those benefits pan out when you bake it alongside lots of refined flour and slather the whole thing with icing. On the other hand, it can’t hurt to add a healthy herb to a cake.
You can enhance the flavour further by adding some verbena leaves to the sugar and oil and letting them infuse overnight before removing them.
This recipe uses an equal quantity of ground almonds and ground desiccated coconut to create a really moist cake with a soft crumb. Including nuts, that are naturally oily, also means you can reduce the amount of added oil.
For a healthier version, you could omit the icing and drizzle with a couple of tablespoons of sugar dissolved in lemon juice.
Ingredients
- 260 g self-raising flour
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 60 g desiccated coconut
- 60 g ground almonds
- 250 ml oat (or other non-dairy) milk
- 90 ml light olive (or other mild-tasting) oil
- 20-30 lemon verbena leaves
- zest of half a lemon
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 150 g golden caster (or other) sugar
for the icing
- 50 g (mild/flavourless) coconut oil
- 30 ml oat (or other) milk
- 200 g icing sugar
- zest of half a lemon
- a few drops of vanilla extract
- lemon verbena leaves to decorate
method
- Set the oven to 180°C/360°F and lightly oil and line the base of an 8″ cake tin.
- If you have a processor or grinder up to the task of grinding the desiccated coconut, do this first to create a texture similar to ground almonds. It doesn’t matter too much if the coconut is not ground.
- Finely chop the lemon verbena and set aside.
- Zest the lemon. Set half of the zest aside and place the rest in a large bowl.
- Sift in the flour and bicarbonate of soda into the bowl with the lemon zest. Then add the almonds, coconut and chopped lemon verbena. Stir or whisk to combine thoroughly.
- In a separate jug or bowl measure the milk, oil, vanilla and lemon juice and whisk to combine.
- Pour the liquid into the dry ingredients, stirring as you go to ensure it’s well combined.
- Transfer to the baking tin and bake for between 35 and 45 minutes until the cake is well risen and there is a rich golden crust on top.
- While the cake is cooling, make the icing by beating all the ingredients together in a small bowl.
- Once the cake is completely cool it can be iced and decorated with a few leaves and/or edible flowers (the pictured flowers are potentilla).
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